as deeply as he deserved to be hated. He had killed my father, and he walked like a man who has a hard life. The useless bastard.
We let them lead us by a couple of stades, and then we followed them. I wanted to make sure that they were at the assembly. I rehearsed my speech as I walked and I feasted my revenge on the sight of Simon's back.
Someone had talked. I know that, because by the time I reached the assembly, most of the men of Plataea were already there, and the silence was like a living thing. I was closer behind Simon as he and his sons trudged up the acropolis to the meeting place. The sun was up, and the world was beautiful with autumn splendor. Demeter and Hera had made a perfect day, the sky was blue and justice was close to my hand.
Myron was dressed in white, and he stood on the little rise where the archon always stood. He waited until Simon walked into the crowd. Even Simon noticed that the crowd parted around him, and no man went to stand close to him. But he was a surly man, he had few friends, and perhaps he expected no more. He crossed his arms and his loutish sons stood around him.
I remember that there was one voice that went on and on – Draco. He was trying to sell a man a wagon, and he hadn't noticed the silence. He was hidden by the crowd, but after a while, he understood, or perhaps a neighbour caught him with an elbow.
I meant to be the last, and I waited by a cowshed, watching the latecomers, some hurrying down from the heights through the gated wall, others trotting up the lanes from outlying farms. Myron's sons were both late, still chewing bread. And then Epictetus and his sons came in a group, with Empedocles on a litter. I fell in with them, and we walked into the middle of the assembly and stood before the archon.
Men looked at me, because I had a spear. Perhaps five other men in the crowd had spears, and they were over sixty. And my spear was fine – in a way that farmers seldom decorate a weapon.
A murmur started.
Myron raised his arms, and silence returned. And then, with two other men, priests, he sacrificed a ram.
'You owe me for that,' Epictetus said in a hoarse whisper.
Then the archon raised his hands, wiped the blood and faced the assembly. 'Men of Plataea!' he said. 'I call you to order, the assembly of the men of the city, to make law.'
We gave him three short cheers, and then the whole assembly sang the Paean.
I had imagined that my moment would come immediately, but however long you wait for revenge, there's always delay. In this case, an existing boundary dispute had to be read into the record. I didn't even know the men involved.
While old Myron's voice droned on, I saw Bion spot his son. I saw the change come to his face. And then I saw him look at me.
His grin was wide enough to split his face. He looked away, hiding his reaction from Simon who was not far from him, and then he began to move through the crowd – not towards us, but to stand behind Simon.
Simon took no notice, but other men had marked Bion – he was a popular man – and they followed his eyes, and men began to point and stare, first at Hermogenes – and then at me.
Draco saw me. He threw back his head and laughed.
Myron got to the end of his boundary dispute. 'New business,' he said. 'News from Athens.' He looked out over the assembly. 'Where is the messenger?'
I stepped forward, and men cleared a path for me.
'I have come from Athens,' I said. 'And before that, from Asia, where I was a slave. I have come to accuse Simon son of Simon of the murder of my father – and of selling me into slavery.' I turned, and pointed my spear at Simon, and a path cleared from me to him.
'What can the punishment be,' I asked into the silence, 'for a man who stole my father's farm, his land, his tools and his wife? After stabbing him from behind in the face of the enemy?'
Simon was so surprised that one of his hands clawed the air, as if to push away the words I said.
'Who here does not know Simon the Coward? How many of you stood against the Spartans when my brother died at Oinoe? Who was it who ran from the rear of the phalanx? And when we went against the Thebans? Who shirked, and stood in the rear? Is there a man here who remembers Simon standing his ground? And when we faced the Eretrians – I saw him stab Pater. I saw it.'
'You!' he spluttered. It was nigh on the worst thing he could have said, because his shock and his guilt were writ on his face.
'I am Arimnestos of Plataea!' I roared in my storm-cutter voice. 'I accuse this man of murder!'
He lost his case there, before he opened his mouth to plead.
Mind you, the law doesn't work like an avenging titan. The assembly voted to hear the case, and appointed a jury. And on the spot we argued our cases – this wasn't Athens, and we had no paid orators.
Nor did we have a prison, or guards, or Scythians to take a man and bind him.
The jurors heard our evidence. I had some – and I was determined to use what I had learned in Ephesus and from Miltiades, so I summoned witnesses about Pater's courage and Simon's cowardice, and Simon writhed and his sons glowered. But when the sun began to set in the sky, the jurors went to their dinners and the crowd wandered away, and Simon and his sons headed back up the road to the farm.
I followed them. All of Epictetus's sons were with me, and Hermogenes and his father, and Myron's sons. In every way but the decision of the jurors, the trial was over. We followed them up the road, and hounded them until they reached my lane.
'Stop,' I said.
They cringed.
'Simon,' I said, and he turned. He was shaking. His sons stood away from him – I think in revulsion.
'Take your chattels and go,' I said. 'Or the law will kill you.'
He turned away from me, a shadow of the angry man he'd once been in my father's andron. Honey, I think what he had done had eaten him, until he had nothing left but an angry shell, like the outside of a thorn apple eaten by worms.
And this is the lesson. Remember that I said, when I sat at Oinoe, that I had learned that you could kill, and rape, and force others to your will?
Perhaps you can, for a time. But the gods are there. They do watch. Simonalkes needed no punishment from me. He wore his failure, his cowardice, his alienation, on his face. He was no Plataean, though he had occupied my house while I was a slave. AndI – I was welcome back. He lived an exile in his own house – and if I was a poet, I might say that I'd carried Plataea with me wherever I wandered.
I would submit to the mastery of the laws of men and gods.
I went back to Epictetus's house, and slept well. In the morning, none of Simon's Corvaxae came to the trial. The jurors sent two men to find them.
They came back to say that Simon was hanging by a leather rope from the rafters of the bronze shop, and the sons were gone, and my mother was too drunk to speak.
And so, about noon, on a beautiful day, I walked up that long hill, past the olive trees, past the byres and the grape vines. Bion and Hermogenes walked with me, and Empedocles, moving slowly, and Epictetus, and their sons, and Myron and his sons, and Draco and his sons.
I could hear the swarm of flies on the corpse in the shop.
I was numb.
But the men around me held me up, the way men do in the phalanx when you are wounded. The shields of their friendship covered me. The spears of their humour kept the furies at bay. They were there – the furies, baying for his blood, revelling in the accomplishment of their task – I could feel them on the air.
We walked up into the yard, and then my sister was in my arms, saying my name over and over.
I held Pen a long time, and then I put her down.
'You are all my neighbours and my friends,' I said. 'But I need to clean my own house.'
Every man there nodded, even the youngest. Some things you have to do yourself.
I never promised you a happy story, Honey. It has glad parts, and sad parts, like life.
I went upstairs to Mater. She was drunk – but she knew me. She had a knife – a good bronze knife. Pater's work. She'd tried it on her wrists a few times, and there was blood on her linen and on her arms and, incongruously, some on her feet. Her skin was old, and the blood found folds to run in.
